


And I'll watch Atlas bleed

by wajjs



Category: DCU, Green Lantern - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Manipulation, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Time Shenanigans, for Hal/Kyle, time & space shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-25
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-16 10:55:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29699490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wajjs/pseuds/wajjs
Summary: When you are lost to time and space and everyone thinks you're dead,when you are gone for decades and time to you is but a minute,when you inevitably come back and everything you once loved has changed.Hal's a stranger in a land that's strange to him as well.Kyle's fought under his legend. But man and legend are never the same.
Relationships: Hal Jordan & Kyle Rayner, Hal Jordan/Thaal Sinestro
Comments: 4
Kudos: 18





	And I'll watch Atlas bleed

**Author's Note:**

> This fic actually is part of a much bigger AU that one day I'll finish writing. But since this part (and pov) of the au won't leave me alone, I decided to write this first and release it here out into the wild before the bigger, more cohesive part is halfway close to done.
> 
> The summary explains the plot, but just in case here goes: during his relatively early days as Green Lantern, Hal gets caught in an interdimensional time-space bubble. He breaks out of it, except that what for him were only a few days, for the rest of the world decades had already passed. Everyone believed him to be dead, and since his ring was never found, the Guardians turned him into a legend, one that the other earth lanterns were compared to time and time again.

**And I'll watch Atlas bleed**

All this time, all Kyle's ever heard of him is legends.

How his heart was so great and his willpower so raw even in death he continues to be.

How his ring was never found. How his soul was so connected to it they became one, they became one with the green force of will that keeps them all alive and kicking.

How his Sacrifice made him the Greatest Hero. 

How because of his death even the best among the best turned yellow.

All this time, all these legends.

They all started to think of him as a faraway thing. Not a person. Not someone who had lived and bled.

Kyle never wondered if he felt fear when he died. Legends don't feel anything.

He came back, then.

He came back brighter than all of the suns Kyle's seen, tore through what should've killed him, space and time bending to his actions, to his will.

Prodigal he returned and age had eluded him.

_That's not a wise, unreachable man._ That's what Kyle thought upon seeing him for the first time, laying on the infirmary bed, connected to iv drips and monitors and.

That's not a legend.

He's real.

He's real, and he's terribly _human._ Not made of word, not an idealization, but made of muscles, skin and bones. With organs that work, with hair and nails and tongue. A human, like him. Like all of them.

He hated Him.

He had no other option.

Kyle hated Him because he was made out to be a legend when he wasn't, a legend he didn't ask for, one he didn't want to keep. Because he's fallible and he's rude but he's resilient. Because his ring hasn't failed him and instead it's his soul what powers it. Because even now the Guardians whisper among themselves in admiration and trepidation.

Because he was the first, and now he's the last. Impossible to escape his light. Impossible to deal with.

Kyle hated Him, and he let Him know.

Everyone of them did.

And the man laughed at him. The man laughed as his once friends, older now, twitched behind them.

He laughed while saying:

"I know. I hate me too."

Kyle hated him More, after that. Because as much as he tried, there was no way left to keep on hating once they talked.

But god, he's _bright._

His light nearly blinding and he doesn't think twice before taking a fatal blow for Guy, his green shield cracking the more it's put under pressure, beams piercing through. And yet his green glistens as he shoulders on, inch by inch reclaims his space in the battle until the beams themselves are broken by his will. 

He rushes head first into the fight, fists raised, flies like this is his last time. Maybe that's what makes him succeed. Maybe that's what makes him fall thrice as hard.

Kyle screams out his name when it inevitably happens. It tears right through him. There's no holding back.

Among the celebration for winning and living to see another day, his retreating steps go largely ignored.

"You don't have to leave," Kyle tells him, dares to reach out, hold his wrist. God, they are almost the same age and they aren't. The man's not a day older from when he disappeared yet for the rest of the world it's been _decades._

What is it like to live in such a way? How lonely does he pretend not to be?

Hal doesn't look at him. His blood taints his bandages an uncomfortable red and his bruises are still blooming all over the place.

"You don't want me here," Hal says, never wavers. Even like this, nothing in him ever does. Perhaps this is why he's always been great. Perhaps… "I know when I'm not welcome."

_I don't hate you,_ Kyle feels like screaming. _No one here hates you. We never, we never did._

"Stay," is the only thing Kyle manages to say.

Hal's wrist still slips through his fingers when he walks out without turning back.

Sinestro's hands are around his waist.

John holds Kyle back, keeps Guy in place, right where he's bleeding out and cursing.

Sinestro's hands are around Hal's waist and he's giving Hal a _choice._

_It's simple,_ he says, _I'll let them live if you come with me._

_You have nothing to lose, after all._

_Everyone gave up on you, but I didn't._

_I never stopped looking for you._

Hal isn't looking at them.

John's hands close into fists where he's holding onto the other two because it's clear. The outcome. This can only end one way.

"They don't want you, Jordan," Sinestro speaks again, smiling.

Hal never looks at them. Still shining so bright and so green, Kyle thinks he can see for a moment—a reality in which things are different, in which Hal never disappeared, in which he was allowed to be the best among the greatest lanterns that he was always destined to be. But then Kyle blinks, and it is gone.

"Yeah, that tracks," Hal still punches Sinestro, though. Pushes him back and back and back and—"You better keep them alive, you hear me? Because once that ring of yours is 'round my finger, I won't hesitate to murder your ass."

"Hal," John's voice is rough, used. "Don't. You've been lost once. Don't."

Encased in threatening yellow, his words never leave their enclosure. Hal doesn't hear.

Kyle screams it, then. Hal's name. Over and over and over. Uses all that's left of his energy to try and break through Sinestro's trap, to _get to him,_ to _stop him_ from making a _mistake._

Hal doesn't listen. Not when he keeps getting further and further away.

Yellow sparks into life, they are all blinded by it. The waves of energy grow and grow into bigger ones, grow in magnitude. They have a heartbeat. They have a pulse.

It's the regret and pain that takes over, that bitter taste of fear. But of course this was the path to be followed. When all is said and done, heroes are destined to waver, heroes are destined to rise and fall.

Forged in sacrifice, who's to say where the limit lays?

Maybe there's no limit when you've lost everything that was once yourself.


End file.
